duskfandomcom-20200214-history
Amber's Descent
Rating: 3 Type: Thorpe Affinity: Nature Ruler: Count Isaac ap Eiluned Long before the white man settled within the lands of Colorado, sacred places were held within native hands; the natives lived, though not as peacefully as some would have one believe, but their tribal skirmishes were minor. Hunting grounds were contested, and arrows were as fast as a lethal message could travel. This was long before Smith and Wesson and Winchester tamed the west, but even in those times, there were dreams. There was the highlands and the lowlands, the higher hunting grounds of the Nunnehi and the great umbral quests of the Uktena and Wendigo (with a few rare of Coyote's children sprinkled in for flavor). The native fae danced around their sacred stones, gathering Medicine, and living in harmony of the natural world. Then the Europeans came; mainly, the Spanish, whose greed drove the Native Americans out of their homes, and the Nunnehi away from their stones; freeholds were built over their sacred stones, as the European kithain, much like their human counterparts, found their ways far more civilized than those of the 'savages' that roamed these lands previously. In 1842, George Simpson and Mathew Kinkead, among other traders and trappers, began construction of Fort Pueblo, a trading post that housed about a dozen families; the purpose of this site, to mortal man, was a post for which to trade hides, skins, livestock, cultivated plants, and liquor, among other utilitarian goods. What was not seen to human eyes was the spite of one European settler – a Spaniard raven Pooka by the name of Felipe Arriortúa saw the site for what it really was – a wall of adobe built over a stone of Glamour, a shield to keep those who did not know how to utilize this oasis for what it truly was. Over the years, tensions grew, and near Christmas of 1854 (between December 23 and 25, to be exact), the fort was attacked by a war party of Jicarilla Apaches and Utes, under the leadership of Tierra Blanca. Due to witness accounts written down at the time, these natives killed between fifteen and nineteen men and captured two children and one woman. The post was abandoned for nearly four years, until 1858 as the Colorado Gold Rush of 1859 began to flourish. As more settlers headed west, establishing Colorado Territory in 1861 (Pueblo, as a city, was incorporated in 1870), the former trading post was once again claimed by the white settlers (and with such, the European Kithain with them). A legend sprung from there, though – of the one woman and two children taken in 1854, there was no historical documentation of what happened to these three. Local logic said that they were taken and killed by the Natives, particularly the testy Apache, though even they had no remembrance of what precisely had happened to such. Stories of the haunting of Fort Pueblo began to circulate, with sightings of a woman who appeared as multi-faceted as the sunset over the Rockies began to spread. This was not the same woman who had been taken, certainly not, but the spirit of those lost within the attack took a feminine appearance and looked over the hold and the stone that was left to wither. She was given the name of Amber, reminiscent of the last few strands of daylight as the sun dipped below the horizon. Pueblo, from the late 1800s until the early 1920s (when the Great Flood of 1921 washed through Colorado) was a major economic hub – the flood, however, took out nearly half of the downtown businesses that were present in the 1920s, and the city has taken many years to come to terms with this loss. What was forgotten, though, was the spring of Glamour, the lingering flashes of Fort Pueblo and its Glamour stone; at the least, this was forgotten for nearly sixty years. In that time, those who saw to the hold brought it further within the Dreaming itself, and when the current count came to lead such, Count Isaac ap Eiluned, the hold itself was within the Far Dreaming, with a trod leading to a Rath within the Autumn World; passage was not always safe through this road, as it had been long contested territory even before the Resurgence (the return of the sidhe simply spurned more Nightmares, a second wave to the Nunnehi who remained within the area). Amber's Descent, named for the place where the sun rests due west, where day turns to night and summer turns to autumn, is strangely Victorian (mainly Tudor Revival) in its design – the manor house with booths and stalls for a few choice vendors sits completely within the Dreaming, with a trod leading to its sister Near Dreaming hold of The Lion and the Rose, as well to an unknown mundane location within Old Denver. In order to reach the trod that leads to this Far Dreaming holding, one must find a particular address on the Pueblo Riverwalk, which surrounds a portion of the Arkansas River; to mundane eyes, it appears to be merely a storage facility, an out of place cellar near one of the bars, which is precisely what it is; this cellar has flooded many times over the years, though as the cellar itself is stone, it has been mostly overlooked by those seeking building flaws. The door is left unlocked, and the cellar is cut off from the rest of the building above, with the river’s temper often being too much to store anything within long-term. In this cut off portion of one of the Riverwalk’s buildings, among the bits of mildew and puddles of occasional floodwater is a single hurricane-style lamp (most likely, to mortals, in order to see if any vermin have infested the cellar); to Kithain eyes, this is a single torch, the only source of faerie light in the abysmal underground. To find the trod that leads to Amber’s Descent, one must travel to the westward wall with torch in hand. If one chooses the wrong wall, nothing will happen; if they do not take the torch, nothing will happen. However, if one follows instructions, they will find themselves within the Dreaming on a puddled path that will bring them to the county seat of Serpent’s Grove. The hold itself, being so far within the Dreaming, does not mirror its Autumn world counterpart; Isaac has ruled this area in moderate absentia for fifteen years, testing the might of the Dreaming itself against his own will, and fleeing to exotic mundane locales in order to stifle Bedlam. He has collected a small court to defend the holding, though few remain loyal to the cause - after all, who in their right mind remains loyal to an oft-disappearing ruler? Along with the thanes who guard this holding lives Amber, the manifested 'ghost,' who in all reality, had been a chimera spiritually tied to the area and the Dreaming surrounding it. The chimera serves loyal to the hold (and sometimes finds herself at odds with its current ruler), and will do what is in best interest of the freehold, whether or not that is in direct opposition to those within. Category:Changeling Category:Setting